Genome assembly reconstruction of the Japanese honey bee,Apis cerana japonica(Hymenoptera: Apidae), using homology-based assembly and nanopore long-reads

Abstract

AbstractHoney bees are important for agriculture (e.g., pollination and honey production). Additionally, honey bees are an important insect model species, especially as model social insects. The Japanese honey bee,Apis cerana japonica(a subspecies of the Asian honey bee,Apis cerana), is a Japanese domestic honey bee, which has several subspecies-specific traits. We previously constructed the draft genome sequence data ofA. cerana japonica, but it needed to be improved considering the use of the genome sequence data for genome structural analysis and repetitive region analysis, as well as the availability of chromosome-level genome data ofA. melliferaandA. cerana. In this study, we constructed the improvedA. cerana japonicagenome data and new gene set data with functional annotations. The constructed genome data, including 16 pseudochromosomes, was found to be highly contiguous and complete, and the gene set data covered most of the core genes in the BUSCO database. Thus, the constructed genome and gene set data have become more suitable as the reference data ofA. cerana japonica.